Some of the weird and wonderful e-mails I receive . . .

Multiple Shorties – –

A mother took her little boy to church. While in church, the little boy said, “Mommy, I have to pee.”

She told him, “It’s not appropriate to say the word ‘pee’ in church. So, from now on, whenever you have to pee, just tell me that you have to whisper.”

The following Sunday, the little boy went to church with his father. During the service, the boy said, “Daddy, I have to whisper.”

The father looked at him and said, “Okay, why don’t you whisper in my ear?”

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For years I had been telling my friend Pete that he ate too much fast food, but he always denied it. One day he admitted I was right. “What changed your mind?”

“My grandson. When my daughter told him I was coming to visit, he asked, ‘Grandpa from Florida, or Grandpa from Pizza Hut?’ ”

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My sister had been ill, so I called to see how she was doing. My ten-year-old niece answered the phone. “Hello,” she whispered. “Hi, honey. How’s your mother?” I asked.

“She’s sleeping,” she answered, again in a whisper.

“Did she go to the doctor?” I asked.

“Yes. She got some medicine,” my niece said softly.

“Well, don’t wake her up. Just tell her I called. What are you doing, by the way?”

Again in a soft whisper, she answered, “Practicing my trumpet.”

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My husband and I had been trying to have a third child for a while. Unfortunately, the day I was to take a home pregnancy test, he was called out of town on business. I had told our young daughters about the test, and they were excited. We decided if it was positive, we would buy a baby outfit to surprise their father when he got home. The three of us stood in the bathroom eagerly waiting for the telltale line to appear. When it did not, my thoughtful seven-year-old gave me a hug. “It’s okay, Mom,” she said. “The next time Daddy goes out of town, you can try and get pregnant again.”

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Working as a pediatric nurse, I had the difficult assignment of giving immunization shots to children. One day I entered the examining room to give four-year-old Lizzie her needle. “No, no, no!” she screamed. “Lizzie,” scolded her mother, “that’s not polite behavior.”

About 90 fifth-graders piled into the airliner I was flying, on their way home from a school trip. Once we were in the air and the crew began trying to serve drinks, I could hear them pleading with the children to settle down so the beverages could be served and the other passengers could get some sleep. No amount of reasoning seemed to help, until I thought of the solution that actually worked: I picked up the PA mike in the cockpit and announced, “Children, this is the captain speaking. Don’t make me stop this airplane and come back there.”

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Stopping to pick up my daughter at kindergarten, I found out that the topic of show and tell that day had been parents’ occupations. The teacher pulled me aside. Whispering, she advised, “You might want to explain a little bit more to your daughter what you do for a living.” I work as a training consultant and often conduct my seminars in motel conference rooms. When I asked why, the teacher explained, “Your daughter told the class she wasn’t sure what you did, but said you got dressed real pretty and went to work at motels.”

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Out bicycling one day with my eight-year-old granddaughter, Carolyn, I got a little wistful. “In ten years,” I said, “you’ll want to be with your friends and you won’t go walking, biking, and swimming with me like you do now.”

Carolyn shrugged. “In ten years you’ll be too old to do all those things anyway.”

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We took the family to one of those restaurants where the walls are plastered with movie memorabilia. I went off to see the hostess about reserving a table. When I returned, I found my 11-year-old daughter staring at a poster of Superman standing in a phone booth. She looked puzzled. “She doesn’t know who Superman is?” I whispered to my husband.

“Worse,” he replied. “She doesn’t know what a phone booth is.”

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For the first time, my four-year-old daughter Kelsey was coming to my office to have me, a dental hygienist, clean her teeth. She was accompanied by her grandmother. When they came in, I greeted them warmly, seated Kelsey and, as usual, put on my gloves, goggles and mask. About ten minutes into the procedure, she got scared and cried, “I want my mommy!”

I quickly pulled off my mask and said, “I am your mommy.”

Without hesitating, my daughter yelled back, “Then I want my granny!”

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When my daughter was little, we took a vacation to Florida. Seated on the airplane near the wing, I pointed out to Rhonda that we were above the ocean. “Can you see the water?” I asked her.

“No,” she said, peering out the window at the wing, “but I can see the diving board.”

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Our family was dazzled by the sights and the bustling crowds during a visit to Manhattan. “This is the city that never sleeps,” I told my eleven-year-old daughter.

“That’s probably because there’s a Starbucks on every corner,” she observed.